Property will only be sold to buyer willing to preserve at least one of the two structures

on the site. The selling price will reflect the historic value of the site and the two National

Register of Historic Places listed structures on it. Send all inquiries to Info@OSOB.net

Mattie Midgette's Store

UNDER CONSTRUCTION 11-27-2018

Sea glass and beachcombing expert Richard LaMotte's new book, The Lure of Sea Glass, is a sequel to his classic, Pure Sea Glass: Discovering Nature’s Vanishing Gems, which was published in 2004. That book, which has become the definitive book on the subject, helped spark the increasingly popular pastime of collecting treasures from the sea.

"In old Nags Head, on the Outer
Banks of North Carolina, is an important piece of history that could soon be
lost to the fury of an Atlantic hurricane.

Inside a weary 1920s bungalow
patiently sits the most extraordinary and diverse collection of seaside relics
ever amassed by a beachcomber.

Known today as the Outer Banks Beachcomber
Museum, this classic coastal cottage was once a local Nags Head grocery store
and home to Nellie Myrtle Pridgen.

Nellie was a woman with one primary passion
since the 1920s; she walked the beaches almost daily in search of treasure, not
gold or silver but virtually any items lost to the sea. "

"Her gatherings from the shore are a time capsule of goods from the first half of our 20th century. She spent the majority of her life methodically accumulating and researching over 50 years of American history, along with a few objects that pre-dated her by several hundred years. Most of the collection is neatly archived in boxes or cases, on shelves or in piles.

This is not a hoarder’s mess, Nellie was well read and understood history quite well, but the collection seems to have outgrown the modest cottage. Glass bottles and sea glass make up a noteworthy part of the menagerie.

Exquisite shells like a rare Argonaut, tin soldiers and toys, as well as a plethora of fulgurites left behind by lightning strikes in the sand.

One remarkable find is the top section of a stoneware jug, featuring a bearded man’s face, a rare piece of German Bellarmine vessel likely from the 1600's."

"For most of her 74 years, Nellie Myrtle – as everyone called her – walked at dusk and dawn, day in and day out, along the oceanfront, the sound side and the dunes at Jockey’s Ridge, scouting for beach glass, bottles, old dolls, anything interesting that the sea tossed aside or the sands gave up. By the time she died in 1992, she had amassed jar after jar of sea glass, sorted by color; seashells of every distinction; colorful plastic toys that fill a big basket; bottles of every color and size, some containing messages; and numerous nautical artifacts."